As Bob Dylan sang, “The times they are a changing.” With opportunities to be more involved in major business decisions, compensation professionals have been asked to solve more difficult problems and face more difficult challenges. In turn, the profession needs to be able to step out of the comfort zone and be ready to seize these opportunities. From a survey of compensation professionals, it has become clear they feel their roles in the organization’s strategic business plans are growing. Only time will tell if compensation professionals’ perceptions will become reality. In May 2005, the authors conducted a survey to find out what compensation professionals think about the future of the profession. From two groups of compensation and HR professionals who had compensation responsibility — Chicago Compensation Association (CCA) members and a sample of WorldatWork members — there were 200 survey respondents.